Texas State University is set to host an International Film Festival and Symposium on Celebrity: Between Fame and Infamy from February 22-March 8, 2024 in San Marcos, Texas. The festival will focus on the complexities involved with the concept of celebrity and feature showings of multiple films, an art exhibition, and a day long symposium including lectures on the topic of celebrity.
According to Texas State’s website, the festival will consist of two weeks of showings from Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Chile, France, Germany, Great-Britain, Italy, Morocco, Spain, and the United States.
Some of the films scheduled to show during the festival include director Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling (Feb. 22), starring Harry Styles and Florence Pugh, Woody Allen’s Celebrity (Feb. 27) starring Leonardo Dicaprio, and Sofia Cappola’s Marie Antoinette (Feb. 29).
If that fact alone is not convincing enough for you to put the opening night’s date on your calendar (Feb. 22), the showings are also completely free, will include snacks, and have an opportunity for attendees to participate in student moderated discussions after each screening.
Texas State professors within the university’s Department of World Languages and Literatures, Dr. Carole Martin, and Department of History, Dr. Louie Dean Valencia helped organize the festival. In June 2023, they were awarded a Pragda Spanish Film Club grant and an Albertine Cinémathèque Festival grant for the event.
Among other classes, Dr. Carole Martin has taught Marie Antoinette and Revolutionary Literature and Iconic Figures of the French-Speaking World. Additionally, Dr. Valencia currently teaches the honors course Harry Styles and the Cult of Celebrity.
According to Dr. Valencia, the two professors came up with the idea for the film festival through both teaching classes at Texas State involving the topic of who in society gets to be celebrated and what makes an individual famous.
The festival will include multiple ways for attendees to think deeper about the concept of celebrity. Featuring an art gallery, small group discussions, and lecture events, each aspect serves a purpose in forming the conversation around fame and infamy.
“Oftentimes for reaching public audiences in particular, it’s helpful to have a variety of different ways for people to enter the conversation. For some people, a movie is a great way to start to think about something. But if you have more than one movie that is all dealing with similar topics or similar issues, then it creates the ability to talk and compare those issues through those movies,” Dr. Valencia said.
For those who prefer to learn through a more visual way, Dr. Valencia said the art exhibition will give people the opportunity to think about how the art portrays the topics of celebrity being discussed and hear from the artists about their work. The exhibition will take place from Feb. 19-March 8 at the Flex Gallery in the Texas State School of Art and Design.
Additionally, the festival will encourage attendees to look at the concept of celebrity outside of only a U.S. perspective.
“We’re using different languages, so that makes it challenge what we might think of what a celebrity or fame is from our normal construct of what it is in the U.S.,” Dr. Valencia said.
Exploring the Topic of Celebrity is Important to Better Understand What Society Values
In today’s world, individuals can range in the levels of fame they experience but still be considered a type of celebrity. There are superstars like Taylor Swift and Harry Styles, but also influencers who have risen to fame due to social media, such as the D’Amelio sisters and Addison Rae.
“We live in a world where a lot of people want to be famous. They want to have followers. They want to be micro celebrities or actual celebrities. And I think that this is a thing that a lot of people are aspirationally trying for. It’s important for us to understand, what does that mean? And why do so many people want to be celebrities or famous?” Dr. Valencia said.
Adding to why having conversations around how society thinks about celebrity is important today, Dr. Valencia said there have also been instances in which political leaders have come to prominence because of their celebrity. As Texas State University prepares to host a presidential debate on Sept. 16, 2024 and is the first location in Texas to do so, Dr. Valencia said it also is why this topic is timely.
Some people do not think of celebrity as a serious topic, but celebrities make up a large amount of today’s conversations, advertisements, and consumed media.
“We as people, the public audiences, do give them power. They wouldn’t have power without us. So why is it that we do that and is there a way to responsibly have a platform?” Dr. Valencia said. “To me, that’s really the core of it. We live in a celebrity culture.What does it mean to have responsibility to others? How do you use your platform responsibly?”
Some Celebrities Offer Opportunities for Others to Feel Empowered
On Feb. 22, the festival will open with a showing of Don’t Worry Darling and a lecture from Dr. Valencia on his new book, Harry Styles and the Cult of Celebrity. Dr. Valencia plans to talk about how the class at Texas State itself became famous, in a way.
“There was one week when this [the popularity surrounding the news of the class] broke that I thought, ‘Okay, well, this will be a week.’ I still am getting interview requests, and it’s been well over a year now! What brings people attention and what you do with your platform once you have it is sort of the crux of what I wanna talk about,” Dr. Valencia said.
He also plans to discuss examples of what Styles does to make fans feel welcomed at his concerts and what it looks like to create inclusive spaces.
“I went to a lot of Harry Styles concerts, in France, the U.K., Spain, Germany, the U.S., etcetera, and what I saw was how many people were able to use those concert spaces and make it their own in a way that I thought was really empowering. Particularly, for women and queer people,” Dr. Valencia said. “Also, for straight guys who were looking for something outside of just what was expected of them as straight men. They saw different possibilities for themselves too, which I think is fascinating.”
Dr. Valencia said his book will partly focus on how celebrities can sometimes help people feel more themselves and how Style’s music plays a part in doing that for his listeners.
Between Fame and Infamy
With the skyrocketing popularity of TikTok, society has become more familiar with seeing the app as an avenue to accessing celebrity-like identities for themselves, and made the term “clout-chasing” a much more commonly used phrase.
“You have your clout chasers. But, also, you have people who want more than just fame. They want to be celebrated. To celebrate somebody is a really different thing than just being famous or being infamous. To be celebrated means that your work in some way, stands for itself and I think that’s where a lot of interesting art can get made and can help people think about the world that they live in,” Dr. Valencia said.
It’s not rare to see an individual quickly rise to fame on social media. However, if you’re on the internet often, you also know that with that comes the possibility of an abrupt crash of an individual’s reputation or career. Cancel culture is more prevalent than ever in today’s digital world. A video posted at the right time can provide a user with an opportunity to use social media as a source of income. But one wrong move in their personal or online life can lead to the loss of a job, harassment, or becoming “irrelevant” on the internet.
“What happens whenever you have somebody who doesn’t meet your standards or challenges your ethics? And what happens when you still blindly follow them? I think those types of questions can be tied to fame and infamy,” Dr. Valencia said.
Dr. Valencia said he hopes that when people attend the screenings, they think about the topic of celebrity from a global perspective and not just how celebrity is perceived or discussed in the U.S.
Additionally, he emphasized that the festival is free and open to the public.
“We want to get as many different types of students there as possible. This is a film festival for everybody. We’re gonna have some really great conversations,” Dr. Valencia said.
For more information on the Film Festival and Symposium on Celebrity and a full schedule of the film showings, visit the film festival’s website and Instagram.